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WAIFS: 



A COLLECTION OF MISCELLANY 

EDITED BY 
BURDETTE EDGETT. 



No thought is, in the primary sense, original, nor can any 
thought be possessed by an individual in fee-simple. Humanity 
has common and equal property in every good thought. In time, 
each member of the human race shall rightly value each high 
thought, and shall learn bravely to demand his share in it. 

What is best in thought or in expression — in philosophy or in 
utility — shall nobly live forever. What is worst shall be divinely 
remolded, and shall sweetly live in noble transfiguration. 



<*• 



POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y. 
MDCCCC. 



' 



35398 



Library of Coo^r*** 

Two Copies Recced 
AUG 16 1900 

Copyright «ntry 

SECOND COPV. 
Delivered r» 

order DIVISION, 
SEP 21 1900 



1 



2£v 



u 



f3 ? 






SO 1.38 

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year nineteen hundred, by 

BURDETTE EDCETT, 

in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Printed by 

Cyrus L. Barnes, 

Poughkeepsie. 






I 

TO MY MOTHER, 

who hath borne her share of discipline in this world's sorrow, 

^ and who "hath done what she could," willingly and faithfully, 

I HUMBLY DEDICATE 

these puny lispings of my vagrant fancy, 

with all the tender love which I cannot learn how to express, 

May the sweet prophecy, 

"And in the evening-time it shall be light.'" 

find fulfilment in her remaining life is my earnest prayer 

to that God which verily " doeth all things well" 




SALUTATION. 

each indulgent friend into whose hands may chance to 
come this first audacious fledgeling of our pensive moods 
5£| we venture to extend sincere and cordial greeting. 

We have no apology to make for offering these impressions of 
human thought, human life and human effort, some of whose vari- 
ous phases we have noticed in our irregular wanderings through a 
little segment of this pulsing world. Officious they may be; callow 
they doubtless are; but they are honest none the less. The world 
needs honest words ringing with honest thought, to inspire worthy 
acts in these crucial days: and the dialect in which the words are 
couched, or by whom uttered, matters not much, so only they are 
honest. 

It has been our chief aim to keep these pages clear from per- 
sonal reference ; for we prefer to live in the kind reader's generous 
estimate — if Fortune favor us to live in this at all — rather by our 
work's worth than by our circumstance. Yet, perchance, seme 
readers will needs wonder respecting the form and manner of the 
editor. — Mark, we do not say author, for who can claim to be an 
author in these amiable times? — If there be such, let them think only 
of a voice: a voice that speaks to them from a great darkness — 
not the Egyptian darkness of despair, but rather a benignant dark- 
ness, which is sure promise of approaching dawn. 

It is our humble hope that here may be something which shall 
appeal to each reader's individual consciousness. If it shall fall out 
that you do not like the essay's swing, nor yet the feeble verse, let 
us commend you to "Sam Saphead " and his "Churlish Chaff," 
for there are worse companions than "Sam Saphead." Sam is an 
honest wight, and not entirely devoid of wholesome humor. May 
he afford you laughter and good cheer. 

And so, may each one find here some sweet morsel to bring 
away, nor be one whit the worse for the perusal of these pages. 

BURDETTE EDGETT. 
Poughkeepsie, July, 1900. 



CONTENTS. 

The Prophetic Mission of the Novelist, ... 9 

A Tribute to " Les Miserables," 12 

The " Elf-child " of the " Scarlet Letter," . . 16 
" To Have and to Hold " — An Estimate, . . . .18 

Truth's Guerdon, 24 

Small Thoughts on Great Subjects, 25 

An Interrogation 43 

Sam Saphead's Churlish Chaff, 45 

A Reflection, 54 



THE PROPHETIC MISSION OF THE NOVELIST. 

EgppgHERE are some prophets ordained to tread the earth 
(KGOwI wit ^ ma J esnc strides, exalted in their humility and 
r^««J humble in their exaltation, with their perceptions in 
heaven and their affections among mortals. These are endowed 
to read the hieroglyphics that are engraven in rude vast por- 
traiture on the rock-ribbed scoll of physical nature, and are 
expressed in flowing rhythmic harmonies upon the plastic and 
responsive tablets of the human heart; and these transcribe 
the world to us in universal character. 

A Confucius, a Buddha, a Jesus perceives the correspond- 
ence between physical and spiritual facts, and by the similes of 
flower and fruit, mountain and sea and waving corn, explains to 
us the beatitudes of heaven. Thales, Pythagoras, Hipparchus, 
Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Herschel, recognizing the 
coherence in the far reaches of space — that space exists for 
the expression of divine purpose, — begin, first with mind, then 
with telescope, to explore unnumbered correlated worlds, upon 
which millions of men had been content to look and ignorantly 
wonder or adore ; and when these had set forth with purpose 
only to read the cipher others had deemed too difficult for their 
attempts, their labors were requitted by discoveries of which the 
drowsy sense of mortals had not dreamed, and these apostles 
of this glorious fact — that manifestation is a necessity to be- 
ing — have given to the consciousness of man new firmaments 
replete with starry light. Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Plinny, 
Senica, Antonius, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Swedenborg, Emerson 

9 



make essay to invest the subtle prerogatives of reason, thought 
and will, to discover and bring within our comprehension the 
suns and stars which illumine our moral consciousness and show 
by their correlated ether-waves our correspondence to the to- 
tality of things ; and these describe to us the laws immutable 
in accord with which mind interacts and reacts upon its grosser 
substratum — matter. 

These stand to us as the preachers of the true gospel. We 
owe to these a debt of gratitude the race can never pay; for 
they have led us out of ignorant selfishness into divine selfhood. 
These are types of a composite unity. Each, in his own place, 
has fulfilled the prophet's mission ; and thus has justified our 
concept of the prophet: for each has been, in his own age, a 
seer — translating thoughts of God, which were expressed and 
shadowed forth in divine figurescript — hence, each has become, 
to all ages, an inspirer of nobler exertions, higher discernments, 
more constant and consistent progress toward perfection. 

The prophet has come into this world to show us life and 
destiny, to guide us to larger views of truth, to lead us out of 
mere perception into the consciousness of high relations. So 
long as he points each soul to an individual responsibility, so 
long as he makes life instinct with fresher and warmer meanings, 
so long as he is able to charge existence with utility, what 
matter the means which the prophet chooses to employ? 
whether he utter his message in the eloquence of the im- 
passioned orator, or sing his song with the rhythm of the lyric 
poet, or portray his thoughts in the sublime language of paint- 
ing, or express his inspirations in the rapturous dialect of music, 
or whether he paints a picture in words, in sighs, in tears, in 
groans and curses, in blessings and joys and mirths and gaieties 
and laughters, and becomes the historian of manners, and the 

10 



analyst of motives, and the limner of life, and the interpreter of 
heart throbs, and the fashioner as well as the delineater of 
character, through the medium of the novel? 

The novelist is the philosopher of human life. In one sense, 
he lives in the imagination; but in another sense, quite as per- 
tinent, he lives in the lives around him. He seeks to idealize 
the real, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the ideal is made 
real, and is reflected in the lives of those who come under his 
influence with heart and mind and conscience receptive. He 
has attained to a clearer understanding of the <4 mystery of life " 
than have those who, struggling amid its "commonplaces," 
are all but overborne in the thick of its conflict, with neither 
time nor disposition to analyze the events which make history 
and in which they are actors. He observes men and women 
in various stages of intellectual, moral and spiritual evolution, 
each striving in mortal combat against some Apollyon; and he 
must inspire them with fresh courage by showing them, in high 
parables, how other human beings have vanquished enemies, 
and have reached the mark at last. 

Every human life is, at the same time, an allegory and a 
reality. The reality, in its individual aspect, is more or less 
intelligible. Each one essays to read the riddle of the Sphinx, 
and hazards a guess at its practical solution. But for the alle- 
gory we need an interpreter. Here, then, is the mission of the 
novelist. He views in us what we, engrossed with the intense 
earnestness of living, have neither time nor disposition to define 
for ourselves. He emphasizes our thought, and analyzes what 
had seemed to us our fleeting emotions. He shows these to 
be correlated expressions of the inherent tendency which shapes 
our destiny. He explains to us the significance of the facts and 
fancies in our life with which we have superficial acquaintance. 

11 



I shall not assume to glorify, as having fulfilled this exalted 
embassy from the Infinite to men of earth, the rabble who have 
appropriated to themselves the title of novelist, to which they 
have no legitimate right — who are, in truth, no more repre- 
sentative novelists than is one of their own ink-spatters a repre- 
sentative novel. It is not my purpose to claim for these little 
lights the homage which is the exclusive right of the immortals : 
but shall we not hold in loving veneration the glorious high- 
priesthood which has been adorned by a Hugo, a Balzac, a 
Richter, a Tolstoi, a Dickens, a Thackeray, a Scott, a " George 
Eliot," a Hawthorne and a Wallace? 

Let us be thankful for the blessed and benign ministry of the 
immortals; let us rejoice that their ministry is indispensable 
to our civilization: for who can say what this world would be 
with the novelist and the novel left out? 

A TRIBUTE TO " LES MISERABLES." 

SF all works of fiction, none more than " Les Misera- 
\) bles" takes hold upon the mind, the heart, the con- 
science, the life. The secret of its power is not to be 
found in its portrayals of historic events ; nor in its descriptions 
of scenes hallowed by memories dear to the heart of every lover 
of liberty, whether in France or in the remotest parts of the 
globe; nor to its magnificent portrait of that Lion of War, 
majestic and terrible even though at bay, stripped of all his 
gilded trappings, standing alone in the midst of awful waste and 
carnage in the sublimity of naked greatness: not in any of 
these — though each adds its own glory, its individual lustre, 

12 




its separate beauty — resides the vital strength of this master- 
piece ; but it will inspire in each earnest reader new zeal for 
the ceaseless competition of life because, engraven upon its 
pages in living texts, are the representations of life in almost 
every phase ; because we find, in this one book, the intimations 
of almost every type of character which we are called to meet 
in this world of action. 

Victor Hugo has called this great novel a history; but it is 
more than a history: it is a dramatic representation in which 
the persons are transfigured into inspirations. 

We esteem Victor Hugo's representations of character be- 
cause they are all around us in life. We do not need to go to 
" Les Miserables " to find a Monseigneur Bienvenu or a Marius 
or a Cosette, least of all a Fantine or an Eponine or a Thenar- 
dier or a Tholomyes or a Javert. 

These last are too real ; and they will be as real as they are 
now until the principle of brotherhood shall come to be recog- 
nized in practice as well as in theory: until, filtering through 
the accumulated prejudices of centuries, it shall permeate to 
the centre of society, and shall stir it in every part : until false 
standards and shams and superficial distinctions shall be put 
away forever : until man shall have, out of the twenty-four hours 
that God has given, more than barely time to eke out a sordid 
niggardly subsistence in toil that only brutalizes — more than 
barely time to wring from the hard circumstances in which he 
was born, and whose dominion he has not yet attained the 
power to break, black bread and coarse garments for himself 
and those who are dependent upon his servile toil — more than 
barely time to sweat and groan beneath a load too heavy to be 
borne — to eat the scanty sufficiency to keep life at the toiling 
pitch — to sleep the slumber that leaves not satisfaction or re- 

13 



freshment, but only makes more weary — to curse the law by 
which he exists and the Being that gives to him the priceless 
boon of life, from which his fellowmen have filched the zest 
and luxury and sweetness, of which society, by reason of the 
cruel and artificial barriers she has raised between him and his 
human brothers, has all but robbed him. 

In this brief survey of "Les Miserables," I shall point out 
only those brilliant concepts which shine forth pre-eminent in 
this splendid constellation. 

The order in which these types of character are set before us 
by this master-hand of fiction is worthy of remark. There are 
no accidents in art, any more than there are accidents in life. 

First in order of delineation, first in order of sequence, as 
the mysterious lines of fate and law run through this strange 
evolution we call society, is Monseigneur Bienvenu, Bishop of 
D , who stands forth as the beacon of a high and unwaver- 
ing purpose which is born out of sore tribulation and exquisite 
trial. Then follow, in their legitimate social references and 
relations, the magdalen, in the persons of Fantine and Eponine; 
the faithless scoundrel and debauche, in the person of Tholo- 
myes; the shameless and cowardly blackguard, in the person of 
Bamatabois; the finished criminal, who seems to pursue crime 
because it is pleasant to him and because he can by this means 
thwart or seem to thwart the will of law, as seen in Thenardier 
and the members of the '• Patron- Minette "; the love of liberty, 
in its broadest sense, as it works upon and is modified by vari- 
ous human temperaments, in the "Friends of the A. B. C"; 
the progressive man, the man with whom we are most often 
acquainted in the life of to-day, the man who is not without his 
peculiar faults and prejudices, but whose faults and prejudices 
do not spoil him for us, because these are amenable to con- 

14 ' 



science, and will give way to his nobler nature, in the person of 
Marius; the street-urchin, in the person of Gauroche; the vari- 
ous types of womanhood, as shown in Mile. Baptistine, Madame 
Magloire, Mile. Gillenormand, Madame Victurnien, Madame Then- 
ardier and Cosette; the shortsighted cruelty of human law, as 
represented in Jauert, and last of all, that grandest of all con- 
cepts, that combination of the convict, the saint and the martyr, 
that strange blending together of the brute principle and the 
God principle in society, as portrayed, or rather intimated, in 
Jean Valjean. 

Other representations of character there are; other phases 
and aspects of life are reproduced in this masterstroke; but 
they are subservient, secondary, dependent; they borrow their 
light from these ; they should be regarded in their reference to 
these, which are, which have been, and which must ever be the 
primary tones in the human scale so long as individual and 
society retain their present shape and constitution. 



<afe&$* 



15 




THE "ELF-CHILD" OF THE "SCARLET LETTER." 

HO can read Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter" without 
being tenderly attracted to Little Pearl, the ** Elf- 
child," whose existence is the magnetic pole of this 
gloomy yet fascinating tale. Will the world ever cease to be 
perplexed when it chances to think of Little Pearl? And I 
have a fancy that some of us will think of her in the midnight 
hour, v/hen the wind whistles in our chimneys, and the snow 
whirls against our window-panes. 

Some critics tell us that Little Pearl is an unnatural child. I 
do not think her unnatural. That she is possessed by wild freaks 
and fancies, and that she possesses some characteristics which 
neither of her parents show, I grant ; but it does not sequencially 
follow that a child, to be natural, must be like either of its pa- 
rents. When it is so, it is more a result of association than of 
heredity. 

The chief reason for Little Pearl's unusual temper is in 
Hawthorne's temperament. Miriam, in " The Transformation," 
is unusual. Donatello is even more uncanny than is Little Pearl. 
It is Hawthorne's whim to make his creations fantastic. This 
is not without its reference; for it illustrates his philosophy. 
Hawthorne meant Little Pearl to represent the natural conse- 
quence of wilful sin; but in this, it seems to me, he overshot 
his mark. Little Pearl was a gadfly to poor Hester; but Little 
Pearl was also Hester's comfort — the one rich drop of joy in 
the bitter cup of Hester's sad life, the one golden link in the 
chain of iron which bound her fast. 

Hawthorne purposed that the sin of Dimmesdale and Hester 
Prynne should mask the child's real nature. This purpose is 
made clear when, after the burden has been lightened by 

16 



Dimmesdale's public confession, the mask is lifted — "the spell 
was broken" — and the natural disposition of Little Pearl is 
revealed in all its simple loveliness. 

To me, Little Pearl is full of far other meanings than that 
which was Hawthorne's apparent intent to convey. Indeed, I 
do not acquiesce in the interpretation he seems to put upon 
his own creation. My philosophy is not so black dyed. The 
ideas which Hawthorne hints at in "The Scarlet Letter," and 
more distinctly speaks out in " The Transformation," are mon- 
strous, repugnant, horrible. 

Little Pearl is a natural expression of childhood, considering 
the circumstances in which her creator placed her. She seems 
to me a typical child. Her wild infancy is a passionate protest 
against the circumscribed unnaturalness of the stern old Puri- 
tans among whom her young life was cast — just as the life of 
every child, before the galling bonds of custom and hypocrisy 
and base servility to self-interest are drawn too tight for free 
action and free breath, is a protest against the formalism and 
lame makeshifts of the world. 

Little Pearl is capricious; but so is every child. What were 
any child without the pranks and caprices which are an essen- 
tial part of childhood? 

Little Pearl wins upon me because of the unconscious spon- 
taneity which pervades her whole conduct and dictates her 
every action. 



17 



"TO HAVE AND TO HOLD"— AN ESTIMATE. 

"The tale is impossible to lay down unfinished." 

IVgsfi^yT is no light praise, in this age, when it can be truly said 
|5]|m that any one book can so fascinate us that we may not 
l^sM) p U t that book down with impunity nor leave it half pe- 
rused. When we consider the multitude of books, each one of 
which clamors for our attention, it is indeed a rare book, with 
some peculiar merit of invention or style, which can constrain 
us to resign ourselves to its particular fascination. So, when a 
cool calculating critic, who is not wont to cover up the crystals 
of his judgment with meaningless panegyrics, says of a new 
novel that it "is impossible to lay down unfinished," we are 
disposed to be inquisitive. 

What of the book which can so charm us ? By what necro- 
mancy does the charm work? Who is the potent charmer? 

' Faith, 't is a pretty story — a wild romantic tale of wild ad- 
ventures in a wild country and upon wild seas — a doubtful nar- 
rative of doubtful incident involving doubtful personages with 
doubtful blendings of doubtful characteristics, which are exhib- 
ited in doubtful sorts of expression. Yet, romance or reality, it 
wins, holds, engages, fascinates us. We live in its pages while 
we read. We realize each experience as if we had part in it. 
We do not think of asking if the experiences are possible or 
probable. We know that we are borne along by the story's 
swift tide, and we consent to have it so. Why do we thus con- 
sent so willingly? We do not so yield ourselves to another book 
out of ten thousand. Do we yield ourselves to be duped ? Do 
we consent to be hoodwinked? 

18 



Is the tale so out of nature that it is impossible or yet im- 
probable ? Are the pirates so tame a lot ? Do they lack the 
power to be " convincing " ? Does the book " hold the mirror up 
to nature " or does it show false lights and shades of character? 

How does it happen that one person can enter into and 
realize so many emotions, sensibilities and states of mind as 
are set forth between the covers of this one book? What 
widely travelled man of the world with experience multiplied 
upon experience could write a book so full of character-painting 
as is this? What shall we say when we are told that this 
romance of character was germinated in a woman's gentle 
soul ? 

In sooth, it is a pretty woman, yet lingering in the maiden's 
blush and bloom, who plays with pens and ink and paper; who 
juggles with words and figures and emotions for her pastime ; 
who conjures up dead heroes of two races out of time's distance 
for her amusement and recreation when she is weary with 
attendance upon household toils ; who can woo wilful folly, and 
in the process of the wooing transform it into trustful wisdom ; 
who can verily charm villainy to ruin and to death ; who can 
with fidelity delineate the sentiments which possessed the actors 
of the past ; who can muster the ghostly actors to grace our 
feast, and who, finally, can set back the sun of history, not ten 
degrees, but nigh three centuries, so that we live again that 
strange hard life our fathers lived, with all its perils. 

Our gentle conjurer infuses a magic realism into every page 
of the story. We believe in her people whether we will or not. 
We sympathize with them as though they were our kin, as indeed 
they are, for they are the representative kindred of the human 
heart. We love with them ; we hate with them ; we grieve 
with them ; we hope with them ; we fear with them. We, for 

19 



the moment, forget our own reference, and feel only our rela- 
tion with these. We are not in the closing years of the nine- 
teenth century. We are living in the first quarter of the 
seventeenth century. It is not the woman Mary Johnston that 
speaks to us. It is Ralph Percy, one of Virginia's first English 
settlers, "the best swordsman in Virginia," a stern captain of 
stern pioneers in a stern v/ilderness at a stern time, an English- 
man of a sturdy English stock with all the prejudices, super- 
stitions and hatreds of his age. The people of the past who 
have had part in the history of the infant colony live again as 
he tells us of them in his marvellously realistic fashion. A dis- 
tinct flavor of the martial times runs through every sentence, 
save those sentences in which are bodied forth the natural 
cadences of the human heart, which are for all times, all 
conditions, all circumstances. 

The far reaches of imagination which Mary Johnston has 
shown in this book are past all belief. Is there a variety or a 
shade of human emotion she does not touch ? Is there a depth 
of human feeling she has not sounded ? Who does not laugh at 
the audacious humor of Jeremy Sparrow must be a sorry wight 
indeed. Who does not feel a tender sympathy with Ralph Percy 
in the stern, sad hours of his apparently hopeless quest, must 
be devoid of human sensibility. Who is not moved with admi- 
ration for the lofty courage of Nantauquas, in that final struggle 
when he must needs choose between his own people and the 
friends of his adoption, whom he truly loves, must have within 
him a heart cold as that clay with which his bones shall shortly 
intermix. Who does not love the gentle, defiant Jocelyn, the 
wilful winsome ward of the king, this rose thickset with thorns, 
this hunted huntress, need not fear to be made captive of the 
" tender passion." 

20 



Who can escape loving Jocelyn? Who would escape loving 
her if he could ? We like Rebecca, or Rowena, or Ethel New- 
comb; we admire Romola, or Edith Plantagenet, or Diana Ver- 
non, or Princess Irene; we pity Trilba, or Hester Prynne ; but 
we love Jocelyn. Small wonder that Ralph Percy hated my Lord 
Carnal from the moment he set foot upon Virginia soil. Small 
wonder that governor, minister, servant, friend were captives to 
the lady Jocelyn. She was unfriended and defenceless ; yet all 
were her friends, all were defenceless in her presence. 

Some cynics may despise Jocelyn as a pretty doll ; but such 
cynics are only superficial. We know that there is room in 
nature for the diurnal butterfly, which has its uses, as well as 
the industrious bee ; and Jocelyn is a thousand times more 
precious and necessary in the system of nature than is either 
butterfly or bee. 

Jocelyn 's charm is not in her exquisite beauty of face and 
manner, but in her tender steadfastness of soul, her passionate 
hatred of all things base, her scornful contempt of all things 
mean and villainous. She is a creature of shifting moods; 
but her moods are surface-ripples. Beneath all her moods is 
the deep soul-current running sure and strong. 

When the Lady Jocelyn Leigh fled to Virginia in the disguise 
of a waiting maid and under the name of Patience Worth, in 
order that she might escape marriage with his hateful lordship, 
whose villainy she must have discerned with quick unerring in- 
sight, she did that which made her abhor herself ; but in doing 
this she chose the only escape she knew, saving suicide. She 
hoped for death before the day of her apprisal should come ; 
but death chose to lag. When she was finally married to Ralph 
Percy, whom she knew not and loved not, she did the only thing 
she felt she could do honestly. She appealed to his manhood 

21 



and threw herself in all her helplessness upon his generous 
kindness. 

After she had secured his promise that she should be treated 
as a guest, she was not content. She set about to know her 
husband in her own way ; but her way was not his way. She 
could not forget her court-manners. We may question if she 
cared io forget them. 

Between that first night at Weyanoke and their journey to 
Jamestown there v/as little show of love. How long they might 
have been content to live thus coldly — united, yet apart — had 
the coming of the Santa Teresa not intervened, is matter for 
conjecture. Jocelyn knew my Lord for a tenacious rascal; but 
she certainly did not count upon his chasing her to her hiding- 
place. The events which followed showed Jocelyn that her hus- 
band was a man of honor, and drew her closer to him. The 
cup of wine, the haunted wood, the open boat, the pirate ship, 
the state cabin of the George , the gaol — each and all tightened 
and knotted the cord which bound them together. 

We have reason to believe that she had learned to love him 
before they went from Jamestown in the open boat. " You have 
been very good to me. Do not think me an ingrate." This 
meant mere than the mere words might seem to express. j|" I 
had not met with much true love or courtesy or compassion in 
my life." What a pathetic confession is this for one in her 
estate! How could she love, not having felt love? But in the 
open boat she felt and knew it, and aboard the pirate ship and 
in the gaol, and in that last crucial ordeal when Percy was lured 
to the deserted hut by that last dark villainy of my Lord Carnal, 
when she was all but certain that her husband had perished in 
an attempt to serve her, she realized the fullness of true love, 
and she responded to it with as full a measure as had been 

22 



meted to her. And when at last the glad hour came which 
re-united them, it knit two hearts so close, fiber with fiber, 
that death itself could not dissever these two hearts. 

1 have spoken most of Jocelyn, for it is Jocelyn which most 
attracts us; though Jeremy Sparrow — that honest one who, 
whether in the role of minister or mate of pirate ship, is ever 
the same true friend and servant of the living God — will re- 
main dear to us ; and Ralph Percy, with all his faults and preju- 
dices, will merit our admiration ; and Diccon, whom we must 
not forget, deserves our thanks ; for he has emphasized a truth 
we need : namely, that a good action done from the heart may 
oft atone for a vile deed which was begot in passion. Did not 
his voluntary partnership in Percy's peril on that dark night 
when they left the gaol together, and on the nights and days 
which followed that — did not the sadness of the dreary death- 
scene purge away the stain of that black intent which he had 
harbored for an hour ? 

I will not pause to speak of the witchery of description that 
marks this book, and shows the genius of its author in yet 
another light. What can surpass the suggestive realism and 
aptness of illustration which distinguishes the whole book? 
There is a touch like Shakespeare's in some of the descriptive 
passages, while yet each bears an individual character. 

But in this galaxy of excellences one shines supreme. This 
book deserves to live because it speaks the universal language 
of the human heart. 

"All things die not; while the soul lives, love lives; the 
song may be now gay, now plaintive, but it is deathless." 



23 




TRUTH'S GUERDON. 

RUTH'S clear message speaks fresh in each soul 
That owns and acts truth, when 't is spoken. 

Truth costs thankless toil; but the loyal, 

The brave, that live truth, have God's token. 

Durst thou, anxious one in doubt's sorrow, — 
Pining for God, homesick, grief oppressed, — 

Boldly stand forth — truth's martyr — to-morrow, 
If God's truth were to thee new addressed? 

Couldst thou welcome reproach and sneering? 

Couldst thou love all the taunts of thy friends? 
Can joy of the Christ's re-appearing 

Recompense for what bitterness lends? 

The proud hosts of opinion shall scorn thee. 

Pleasure's mad mob shall hate thee, in sooth. 
Because truth's new day dawns upon thee, 

Thou condemnest the world, by the truth. 



24 



SMALL THOUGHTS ON GREAT SUBJECTS. 




ggOW enchantingly sweet, how charmingly simple, how 
picturesque, how restful, how fascinating is a primi- 
tive rural life ; and yet, sometimes, I wonder if, after 
all, there be not more real comfort, more lasting pleasure, more 
solid living, more true benefaction, more that endures and exerts 
an influence for good in such a harmonious, well-rounded life, 
than in our noisy, whirl-a-gig, work-a-day existence — where we 
too often have not time for any thing or any person, unless we 
hope to derive some selfish advantage from that person or thing. 



gjS|g20NE of us, no matter in what department of effort he 
JmJK is engaged, can do all things so well as he can do some 
- thing. We are driven to the work that belongs 



one 



especially to us by learning, through bitter experience, what we 
cannot do well. We often learn our adaptability through a long 
and painful series of humiliating failures. 



K2£^of|YE often treat our best, our dearest, and our noblest 
JwHjffll / friends worst, because we are sure that they will bear 
^^^^ from us what others who do not understand us would 
take exception to as slights. Of what fine use is friendship, if 
it cannot suffer and make allowance for our friend's natural in- 
firmities of temperament and disposition? and especially so 
when the friends we hurt with unintentional wound know how 
earnestly we strive to keep down these blots and outcroppings of 

25 



the brute-inheritance, which spoil our higher natures all too 
apparently. Surely, we draw most largely upon our closest 
friends, for friendship is of that strong, sweet quality that the 
more it gives, the more it has to give ; and thus it ever grows 
sweeter, fonder and more willing. 

The inmost spirit of the friend should be exposed and open 
to his friend — clear of inspection as the new-writ page; for if 
there be aught within the sanctuary of the human heart that 
will not bear the revealing light of friendship's perfumed lamp, 
if there be any wound — whether of grief, remorse, or living 
wrong — that is not soothed with friendship's sympathy and 
healing balm, with the sweet consolation of her voice, with the 
glad comfort of her conscious presence, if there be any ill that 
will not yield to friendship's tender probe, her fine persistence, 
then, by the most crucial of all criterions, the heart that holds 
such rancors stands adjudged — proclaimed and showed with 
loud advertisement — that heart is rotten to the very core. 

¥¥ 

The highest friendship can exist only between souls of equal 
strength and poise. 

\HO can estimate the benefaction which a good life, 
rounded out in beauteous symmetry, confers upon 
the human race? There is no standard of values 
that can measure it. It transcends, in humanizing and civilizing 
effects, every other earthly agency. Lines of influence go out 
from it in every direction. It molds and shapes other lives ; 
and these, in turn, reflect its radiance. It is multiplied, and is 

26 




the more potent because those who live such lives are all un- 
conscious of the power they wield. Not they who, amid blare 
of trumpets and clang of arms and huzzas of hirelings, have 
put multitudes to rout, but they who have lived humbly and 
without false show or vain pomp of ostentation, who have served 
well their age — whether in obscurity or in the midst of the 
world's turmoil — are the heroes of this world. 

What man would barter away his life for the evanescent 
mist of reputation? He who chiefly plays for the empty bubble 
of human approval publishes that he has no claim to herohood. 
The hero is not troubled by the chatter either of the parlor or 
the tavern ; but by the bright steadfastness of his life and pur- 
pose, he dissipates the flimsy vapors of gossip and calumny 
and ridicule. 




N our appreciation of literary criticism, we have entered 
upon a new era in the philosophy of literature. We 
have discovered that this criticism is creative.- Here 
is the star to guide us out of parable and mysticism. True 
criticism teaches each individual to be his own philosopher. It 
instructs us to think. Thinking leads to an appreciation and 
gradually to a realization of our ov/n power. 

The great appreciater cannot be destitute of creative genius. 
To be an interpreter of greatness one must have greatness resi- 
dent in himself. The man must be measured by what he ad- 
mires. In our study of life or literature we see mostly what 
we set ourselves to see. We recognize another's voicing of a 

27 



thought that finds echo in our own souls ; and we cast to the 
void what is foreign to us; and thus, when one man sets out 
to interpret the genius of another, he tells us his own convic- 
tions, often more surely than if he published these on his own 
account. 

A man is more than his word ; for the word is an emana- 
tion from the man. Behind the words of a man is his thought ; 
and behind the thought is the man. A man is great according 
as he can enthuse others with the living power that resides in 
himself, or can make the powers of others the vehicles of his 
purposes. I care not so much what a man says as I do how 
he says his say. Between the words I listen for the man. 




jHE curse of this world is in men who are sure they 
know so much that, all unconsciously perhaps, they 
feel there is no need for them to study farther. 

¥¥ 

What makes so much writing and speaking lame and inef- 
fectual is the superior air which so many of our would-be 
fashioners of opinion assume. They, forsooth, would have us 
think them made of other stuff than flesh and blood. Never- 
theless, it is apparent that those who have had largest part in 
shaping this world's progressive thought and action are men 
and women who were not loath to own their human relations. 
The capacity of one human being to be the benefactor of his 
fellows is measured by his ability to anticipate and interpret the 
sentiments of others of his kind, by his facility to enter without 
intrusion into their conditions and modes of thought, by his 

28 



perception of the consistent proportion of thought to act, and 
by the fullness, judgment and practical advantage of his willing 
sympathy. 




IDICULE is a strong instrument ; but it is iconoclastic. 
Any wanton urchin can, in a single hour, demolish what 
it has cost the patient toil of centuries to raise. The 
artist only can, by long and faithful labor, construct the beautiful 
statue out of the debris which inefficient builders of the past 
have left behind as the results of ineffectual plan or execution. 

No person has any right to condemn or disparage any system 
unless he can suggest a better and more rational. If this plain 
principle were but obeyed with honest loyalty, how should this 
world be cleared of carping cynics? 



a 



slightest thought-pebble can be dropped into ' ' the 
eternal, shoreless, vast" infinitude of consciousness 
that does not set in motion ripples, which shall extend 
and widen and deepen and grow into great waves of influence. 
These waves of influence shall wash afar, touching not alone 
the soul of him whose sensitive brain first caught this hint and 
intimation of divinity, whose ready tongue — obedient servant 
of the sovereign will — -first framed the subtle thought to plastic 
speech, and who may thus, in some secondary sense, lay claim 
to be the author of this fine commotion in our human life ; in- 
spiring not alone those who may be privileged to read the 
thought — if happily he to whom it was vouchsafed in trust shall 
have put it down in written form ; but these mighty waves of in- 
fluence shall join and meet each other, until they shall embrace, 

29 



in their beneficent or baleful mission, nations that are yet un- 
drempt of, generations that still remain unborn, and races that 
may never learn the name of him who, in some age long past, 
has lived to bless or curse them with his never-dying thought. 

The eagle-pinioned thought soars, unfettered, through the 
limitless realms of consciousness, leaping from peak to peak. 
She does not pause upon the lesser slopes, nor does she deign 
to descend into the deep and shadowy vales below, nor will she 
trouble to inquire what huge abysses, what vast hiatuses, or 
what immense and yawning chasms are in her track, which 
must be bridged or lept by the dauntless earthling who would 
presume to follow her audacious flight. 

¥¥ 

Only when we consider the sure and far-reaching sequences 
of thought that may not be foresworn or turned aside, can we 
appreciate the terrible wrong of an unwholesome thought. 



^^S^ATURE takes care to force us into first-hand expres- 
^If^lS s ' on * What pains we might have spared ourselves if 
wraff ] we had been content to follow nature's lead, and how 
much might be added to this world's utility if we had occupied 
our time in the evolution and crystalizing of the thoughts that 
come to us at first hand rather than with the too much pillaging 
of others' books, the ghoulish disinterment of others' minds. 
We think to dress up our opinion in the trappings of authority 
if we can state it in some dead man's phrase, or shadow it with 
an imposing college dome. Truth needs no adornment of 
authority. She bears her own insignia. Everywhere and 
always, truth's magnet will attract true hearts. 

30 



The thinking and the willing of the past have added so much 
to the common stock, which any of us may draw upon at pleasure 
or at need, and the world is so much the richer for each one 
who has filled up the round measure of life ; but when all has 
been said, we must confess, at last, that only what percolates 
through the strata of individual consciousness, from the exhaust- 
less ocean of divinity, and is interblended with and consciously 
incorporated into our individual experience, can enhance the in- 
dividual being, or give any insignia of additional power. The 
record of past thought is chiefly useful as it points the progress 
of man's thinking ; and our whole study of the wise sayings of 
poets and philosophers — investigators, disparagers, rhapsodists, 
descriptionists, experimentalists, celebrants — must be to our 
minds as the food is to our bodies, or the coal to the furnaces 
of our engines : namely, to furnish force wherewith to generate 
finer force, to be converted, in the intellectual and spiritual 
laboratories, into incorporate being, each to bear its correlated 
part in carrying forward the individual toward symmetrical 
completeness by compelling him to first hand effort. The 
words of the fathers have a primary value in proportion to their 
suggestion, as they stand for the encouragement of the child 
to surpass the sire. 

^EARNING consists not in additions of pompous tomes ; 
nor is knowledge in cramming the head with dead in- 
terpretations of fossil facts. The highest wisdom does 
not postpone to past ages. Slowly we discover that facts are 
useful to us as we incorporate them in experience; and that 
individuals are great as they have learned to trust in the 
authority of their own convictions. 

31 





ffcE have somewhat to say to our age. It has been said 
before. What matter? The world's needs are what 
they were always. Why not go to the books of the 
past for the inspiration of the present ? The need of this pres- 
ent age demands a present inspiration of a sufficient heat to 
warm the coldness of the present nature. The present need is 
not different in kind from the needs of the past ages ; but it has 
a fine difference in degree which must be counted on with an 
unerring precision. Inspiration is not a thing of ink and paper 
— of letters and words and syllables. Inspiration is alive and 
is life. 



l\r^fe2jrS there room for the poet in the busy life of to-day? Is 
EflKi the race of seers dead? Have we no prophets left 
ks£b£? among us ? Truth has her scientists ; but where, 
after all, are her prophets? 

The voices that called Joan of Arc are not silent to-day, 
but speak as loud as when they bade her leave her quiet rural 
home to mingle in the noisy din of war. The poetic soul of 
the dreamer listens for them, and catches their music in woods 
and brooks and in the sympathetic tones of human speech. 
The angels call the great and nobly born to great thoughts and 
noble deeds. 

§B£|g|HE philosophic teacher is usually obscure among his 
g contemporaries, and is recognized, for his true worth, 
by posterity ; but as the centuries go on increasing, 
the authority of his doctrines gets veneration, as a relic accu- 

32 





mulates honor in proportion to its hoary mystery, until, at last, 
it is rank heresy to hold or claim or disseminate other notions 
or opinions than he advanced and propagated, and which were 
hooted and scoffed and persecuted in the times when they v/ere 
published. If half the attention which is poured out on dead 
heroes were bestowed on the worthy living, there would not be 
such excuse for the sordid pen. 

=§s§S SEASON comes in the experience of every individual 
when, wearied with the vicissitudes, the cares and 
frets and strifes and satieties of this world, and feel- 
ing its utter unsatisfactoriness, he must turn inward for that 
divine power which never fails : when the soul must look to that 
which is before and beyond the present state of existence for 
an inspiration: when each must seek rest in the deep silence — 
conscious only of the grand realities of God and Nature and 
Character and Beauty — of thought and life and effort inde- 
structible : when we strive to lose ourselves in the contempla- 
tion of the immensity of the visible creation and in meditation 
upon the infinitude of the invisible universe : when we find new 
strength for the conflicts of life in considering the great lives of 
the past in their relation to us. 

Then it is, when we are v/andering in the maze of our own 
thought, when we stand hushed before the sublime fact of 
human life in its individual aspect, that our inmost being cries 
out for the assurance that we do not live and think and toil 
and suffer alone. 

Then it is that we are made strong by the sweet knowledge, 
which is born not merely of the reason, but which comes to us 

33 



from the finer intelligence, — the intuitional nature, — that 
others have hoped and aspired and feared and doubted and 
groaned and conquered. 

We are encouraged to heroism by the examples of those 
who have triumphed in experiences similar to our own. This 
is not always the heroism which is aggressive. Oftener, it is 
that not less noble heroism which is submissive. 

The life of the past is reflected and reproduced in the 
present; but man needs more than that inspiration which de- 
rives from noble deeds wrought by other men. 

We need to realize in our finer, deeper consciousness — 
our subjective self — that in all, above all, beneath all, before 
all, behind all — running through all the universe, visible and 
invisible — is the directing power of God ; the unerring " Divine 
Love and Wisdom." We need the knowledge that each indi- 
vidual is, in himself, part and parcel of the great scheme of the 
universe : a small part it may be ; but an essential part never- 
theless, without which the whole would be imperfect and 
incomplete. 




JE must profit by the graduated experiences of life, 
and we must not blame heredity for what is in our 
own power. Heredity is a serious fact that cannot 
be eliminated from our problem of human life ; but our care 
must be that we shall not unduly emphasize it — that it shall 
not furnish an excuse for weakness, egotism or laziness. Bad 
heredity is for us to overcome ; and at its worst, bad heredity 
is only relatively bad. 

34 



Profound as is the world's misery to-day, none of us can, 
on account of it, disparage the fact that the present man is far 
in advance of any man that has preceded him. 

All our woes are traceable to one root, ignorance. The 
need is to enlighten and educate. The brightest sign of our 
times is the general diffusion of knowledge ; for knowledge is 
the prophet of wisdom. Wisdom is the saviour of this world. 

¥¥ 

Gradually, as we learn the law of use and incorporate it, 
abuses will disappear. 

¥¥ 

Suffering comes naturally to each and all of us as the legiti- 
mate sequence of relative ignorance. " No suffering is, for 
the present, joyous, but grievous;" but we must issue forth 
from our "Valley of Humiliation" stronger men and women, 
having conquered each his own Apollyon, or we shall have 
proven unequal to our own salvation, which we are exhorted to 
"work out." How we bear suffering is what tests us. Show 
me any soul that has not been instructed and disciplined in the 
hard school of trial, and I will show you an invertebrate soul ; 
show me any soul that has persistently misinterpreted and mis- 
applied this discipline and instruction, and I will show you an 
ossified soul. 



•^Fj^jUR philosophy is our guiding-star, which points the 
way far, far ahead of us ; but we shall not come up 
with it ; we shall not realize our high ideals until, 



i 



through much tribulation, we shall have attained to perfect- 

35 



ness. Shall we then lower our ideals ? Shall we not rather try 
gradually to lift our practice up to correspond with our ideals ? 

We win our way to our "royal priesthood" through laby- 
rinths of thorn. Then let us not be discouraged by our appar- 
ent failures; but let us be assured that victory will crown us if 
we persevere with constant loyalty. 

¥¥ 

Our philosophic concepts must ever be progressive until, at 
last, philosophy shall be fulfilled in practice. 

¥¥ 

The discoveries, inventions and simplifications of physical 
science are valuable as they enhance the worth of man, and 
make him capable to conquer circumstance. 

¥¥ 

Surely, we are progressing toward a high state of being 
wherein all mystery shall be dissolved ; wherein we shall know 
"even as we are known"; wherein we shall stand face to face 
with the grand realities ; wherein we shall see and perceive 
nature and spirit and consciousness and life and love and 
destiny, not as they appear to us now, viewed as they needs 
must be through the shadowy mist of our own fantasy, but as 
they are. That we desire this end is, to me, proof positive 
that it shall be attained ; for in the nature of divinity, no infini- 
tesimal of power can run to waste ; and thus, we may not even 
dream that which, in some state of being, is impossible. 

¥¥ 

We may not realize our hopes in this present physical ex- 
istence; but we must not, on this account, despair; for that 

36 



we live after we have parted with this human body — this house 
of clay — is to me as sure as that there remain for us, after we 
have laid down this earthy mantle, lessons to learn, knowledge 
to acquire, and wisdom to gain. Who that has passed beyond 
our mortal vision can justly claim to have acquired more than 
the smallest fraction of this world's grosser wisdom? Yet we, 
each one of us, must have attained all knowledge, all wisdom 
and all understanding before we can be perfect. Who that has 
glided through that mystic portal which we call death has had 
the dross of sensuous passion wholly purged away ? And yet, 
we know that only the pure in spirit shall, at last, see God. 

Out from the mazes of animality, sensual lust and brute 
passion, the clues of myth, tradition, allegory and fable have 
guided us to high concepts, noble purposes, and a partial reali- 
zation of our own potentialities. 

Every child is born into a garden of eden, into a paradise 
of innocence, over which is thrown the spell of an enchanted 
delusion ; but as he advances on the stage of life, the shadov/s 
melt away, as fogs do before the advancing sun ; and by de- 
grees slow and almost imperceptible but constant in progression, 
and with ever clearing and widening reaches of vision, he dis- 
cerns his true responsibility and place in the logical and related 
system of the universe ; in other words, he has seized and 
partaken of the fruit of knowledge, — which is forbidden fruit 
to all who would keep their irresponsible innocence, and slumber 
on the couch of slothful ease, content to dream a drowsy lotus- 
life, and leave the muscles of their souls to rot for lack of 
troublesome experience, from which they might come forth 

37 



strong of endurance and able of execution,- — and he is thrust 
out of the garden of eden, while an angel with a flaming sword 
is set to bar the entrance effectually against him forevermore, 
so that, turn wheresoe'er he may, he no longer finds the para- 
dise of his enchanted fancy; for the spell is broken, and the 
veil is lifted from before his eyes, and the delusion is gone 
about to compass some new-born babe. It is a mighty stride 
from the naked savage or the credulous child to the abstruse 
logician; but each is in the system of the world, as well as 
every slight and imperceptible gradation that passes between, 
and we may be sure that if the first were wanting in the divine 
scheme of existence, or any variation of the whole, the last 
and nearest approaches to the fulfilment of that scheme would 
be impossible. The sunlight of truth, in its perfected glory, 
would dazzle our vision if the media through which it is trans- 
mitted to us were not fitted to our graduated states of 
consciousness. 




jLESSED, indeed, beyond expression or comprehension, 
is that soul v/hich can walk securely through the arid 
wilderness of this world; can note the bitterness, the 
misery, the sorrow, the remorse, the despair, the malice, the 
strife, the duplicity, the hypocrisy, the injustice, the intoler- 
ance, the severe and cruel vindictiveness of mortals to mortal 
frailties and indiscretions, the servile paraciteism, the blas- 
phemies of pretentious cant, all the weaknesses of the flesh, 
all the perversions of the divine will that here run rampant, 
and yet, through it all, can come forth from the drear and 
mirey waste unsullied, without any taint of foulness upon it; 
can keep its original pure sanctity stainless and undefiled ; can 

38 



hold steadfastly to its love of humankind, and never falter for 
one moment in its trust that this poor earth-worm, man, shall 
continually meliorate until he shall ultimately work out his per- 
fection ; can preserve its holy sweetness inviolate to the last, 
stronger for the discipline it has received, and the conflicts 
through which it has passed : and when all is completed here, 
having proven eminently worthy in that it has been faithful over 
a few things, can make its exit from the circumscribed stage 
of its limited activities without complaint or regret or anxiety, 
gloriously and happily, to a nobler and grander sphere of broader 
and higher usefulness and felicity. 




study humanity aright, we must look beyond what is 
said or is done to the sayer or the doer that is behind 
the word or the deed. Words and deeds are clothes 
and complexion. We may, in some sort, judge one by his 
clothes or by his complexion ; but the first may be shifted, and 
the second may be disfigured or powdered. Cease not to value 
words and deeds as indices of character ; but penetrate beneath 
the veils, and read unerringly the mystic glyph hid in each 
soul's essential core, and learn to interpret the scrolls of secret 
consciousness and secret desire that will not and cannot lie. I 
value people as I can impress their deepest secret selves upon 
my consciousness. Who has not sharpened to fine excellence 
this faculty to search souls, to uncover hidden thoughts, designs 
and purposes with one brief analysis, which shall suffice for all 
contingencies, in so far as these thoughts, designs and pur- 
poses have mortal reference — who cannot do thus much must 
have only superficial acquaintance with men or books. 

39 



j^Bj^r^ET us supersede our philosophy of sevenths and of 
wlkS^ll tenths > our beliefs in tithes and days, in times and 
KS-^yU seasons, our faiths in forms and systems and men 
and books, by the philosophy of the whole, by the faith in the 
divine humanity and the divine unity. If, in the course of our 
life on earth, we have gained one comprehensive view of the 
totality, the correspondence, the identity, the divinity and the 
unity of things, we have accomplished the sum of philosophy, 
we have approximated the likeness of God. What remains is 
to realize the vision, and to express it in the lines of our 
characters. 

Harmony is everywhere and always. Discord is negative 
power, and may be changed into positive power if all of us 
shall will it with sufficient honesty of purpose, and if each shall 
do his little part to work the transformation. 

Man must seek in himself for the evidences of God as well 
as outside himself ; for if man is in the image and of the 
essence of God, the nearest approach to God which we can 
cognize must be in man. Physical nature is moody, and man 
is a creature of conflicting passions and emotions. Where 
then do we behold the likeness of God? Is God, then, a being 
of many changeful passions? It will not satisfy to answer that 
God is perfect, and therefore cannot be possessed by passions 
or emotions, which are the marks of weakness ; for the human 
mind cannot adequately conceive or comprehend any state that it 
has not, in itself, realized; therefore, its estimate of what is 
signified in the term perfection must be vague and indefinite ; 
and there is no limit upon the great number and variety of the 
estimates, nor any absolute standard of measure. 

40 



At last, after all our weary wanderings amid the vistas of 
philosophic speculation, we come back finally to the central 
fact of human evolution, to the great confession of life, that, 
no matter how far we may have advanced from our primeval 
states, as individuals or as a race, we as yet know very little 
upon any subject compared with what remains to know; that 
immensities of knowledge await the earnest seeker. This 
confession may each of us honestly make ! We must be clear 
of egotism if we would serve our time. It is well if we keep 
to the human utilities in the divine scheme of existence ; for 
only as we build firmly the foundations of our tabernacles here, 
as we are, in the highest sense, loyal to every opportunity for 
doing good, only as we prove ourselves to be just and worthy 
stewards of that knowledge which we have thus far secured, 
can we hope to obtain the right to a comprehensive view of the 
Deific beauty of character fulfilled. 

ms 

HE measure of any age is in the number of noble 
deeds, high thoughts and lofty sentiments which find 
expression in that age. If we are to guage an age by 
its little men, and the mass of their doings and sayings, how 
paltry must every age appear to us. It is the duty and the 
privilege of every great and generous thinker to value every 
society and every period, not by the majorities, but by the 
minorities. 

The times we live in are the best times that ever have 
been, not because there is more knowledge in the world to-day 
than there has ever been in any age before, but because the 
knowledge in the world is more generally diffused than it ever 

41 



I 



was before ; because there is a more widely and deeply-rooted 
desire for the perfection of learning in every branch of research ; 
because the thick walls and high barriers which bigotry and un- 
reasonable superstition have so persistently reared and main- 
tained have been thrown down and overleaped, and inquiry and 
investigation in every department has been freed from the 
trammels of ignorant fear ; because men have become alive to 
their divine heritage, and demand, with resolution, that the 
universe shall yield up its divine secrets to their divine sensi- 
bilities ; and lastly, because a larger number of human beings 
have come into a partial appreciation of their divine powers. 

The achievements of this age are prophetic. Their great- 
est value is in what they prophesy. As the present reaps the 
rewards of the achievements of the past, so the future will ad- 
vance upon the present by utilizing the benefits of our achieve- 
ments. This whole universe grows to what it is by a finely 
graduated system of consistently progressive utilities. 



^gp^ 



42 



AN INTERROGATION. 



1 



^>HAT art thou, my soul: thou subtle essence 
That, in sublime eternity, didst have thy birth? 
Or say thou wast not born, but like the Infinite God, 



Art self-existent, limitless, forever? 

And if thou hadst no birthday, death cannot claim thee. 

Eternal, thou, as the inclusive Godhead, 

Of which thou makest infinitesimal part; 

Indispensable to the divine completeness; 

Necessary, thou, to universal concord. 

Borne on ethereal wave, thou finer than ether: 

Progressive in thy orderly expression ; 

Ascending ever — in constant evolution: 

While thou dost mold the form that marks thy progress: 

Consistent always, though seeming inconsistent. 

Essence thou art of all that is created; 

The whole creation seeks how to express thee. 

Far-related; reciprocal to all and each; 

Reacted on by all; on all reacting; 

Responsible to all; yet still responsive 

To each atom, which is responsible to thee. 

Limitless, thou, in power, yet limitest thyself; 
Thou fill's! the universe; yet art confined in bounds 
That, not content with innocence, volition, 
Omnipotence, ubiquity, omniscience, — 
In which potentialities thou dost abide, — 
Thou might'st, through discipline of hard experience, 
Ordain "The Way of Holiness" to Virtue, 
Without which there cannot be any perfection. 
43 



Palpable thou art; and yet elusory; 

The one reality; yet how indefinite; 

Infinitely vague; easy to comprehension. 

When 1 think I have made thee out, thou escapest me; 

Notwithstanding, I know I shall learn thy secret; 

For I tell thy present progress; composed of thee, 

As thou art composed ; conceived in Spirit : of God, 

Which is expressed in each living utility; 

The mystery of whose progressive expression 

Baffles and" mortifies the wisdom of fools. 

I know, my soul, that, when I have searched thee out, 

I have found out God — only in miniature — 

And all mystery, which is fulfilled in knowledge: 

For in thee are locked up all possibilities, 

All doubts, all solutions, all truth, all purposes. 

Thou canst not long avoid my constant question. 

Soon will I wrest thy secret from the guardian, Fate. 

God owns no limit, save what is self-imposed ; 

And God incarnate shall dissolve the mists that shut 

Truth from our vision. So I, with patience, wait; 

Trying, incessantly, what skill I have obtained; 

Each essay, nearer to my goal a step is gained. 

Yet, my soul, thou answer'st me not ; nor dost tell me 

Nor how nor why nor whence nor who nor what thou art. 



'^^ 



L *«- 



SAM SAPHEAD'S CHURLISH CHAFF. 

MT was the evening before this year's intercollegiate re- 
gatta. The tov/n was fairly full of transient guests, 
who had come in to see the races. Men sat in hotel- 
corridors, pool-rooms, stores, and other basking-places, or stood 
serenely on the street-corners, discussing to-morrow's possi- 
bilities and probabilities ; while devoted women pranced up and 
down, with the colors of their favorite college flaming con- 
spicuously. 

I was in no mood to mingle in this interested throng. Since 
my pet college has felt in honor bound to draw off at the behest 
of her spiteful and jealous younger sister — whose sons have 
a reputation for sulking, in exclusive and lofty contempt, over 
proletarian regattas — and to go away with this same younger 
sister to that American counterfeit of the English Thames, 
there to be beaten in an exclusive regatta, I confess that my 
interest in our Poughkeepsie races has materially waned. So 
it happened that I was sitting in my sanctum -sanctorum, nurs- 
ing my "quick-conceiving discontent," and meditating upon 
"matter deep and dangerous," when I heard a heavy footstep 
slowly ascending the stairs. The next minute I was aware of 
a decided rap-tap-tap- tap on my door. In some annoyance, I 
arose and opened it ; when, to my surprise, there loomed out of 
the dark passage the tall ungainly form of my rustic friend, 
Sam Saphead. 

"Ev'nin' nayber," said Sam, out of breath from his long 
ascent, but already quite at his ease ; *' ha 'n't see' yew in some 
spell . H aew arr yew ? ' ' 

45 



I greeted Sam with cordial satisfaction; for I had a nasty 
headache, and I was mightily glad it wasn't Tommy Tidbits, 
who is forever retailing his neighbors' gossips about some poor 
devil's missayings or misdoings, or Joe Jolly, who is always 
" Iookin' fer some prafarmant," nor, worst of all, Fred Frizzles, 
who is continually and incessantly gabbling about the "pwutiest 
guwl that plays de faiwest gawlf." Somehow, Sam seldom 
fails to soothe my worst headache. 

Sam Saphead is a long-armed, spindle-shanked, skow-footed, 
stump-fingered, skrag-faced individual, with a big chuckle head, 
which gives him his name, and which might, verily, have been 
made from " Mother Rigby's pumpkin." His hair is at least 
half a foot long, and is distributed in straight tufts, which bristle 
indifferently on various portions of his ample pate, and which, 
from their contrast to the bare expanses of scalp, might be 
compared to clumps of stunted bushes scattered on a flat table- 
land. His ears are like small tent-flaps. His eyes are a reddish 
earth color. His nose is a miniature proboscis. His mouth is 
as the entrance to a treacherous cavern of doubtful extent. 
Both his eye-teeth are minus, and as he has a short upper lip 
the absence of these useless accessories, as may imagine, adds 
perceptibly to the rare beauty of Sam's remarkable physiognomy. 
His voice is like a subdued fog-horn, and has a rather ominous 
sound until one gets a trifle used to it. His clothes always hang 
loosely on his gaunt frame, and have a doleful, pathetic, appeal- 
ing, woe-begone " I-don't-fit " air about them. Sam is a guile- 
less being, utterly impervious to his own charms, unquestionably 
thinking himself the most ordinary-looking specimen of hu- 
manity in the world. 

Strange to relate, Sam is a bachelor. His home is back in 
the Shawangunk region, where, apparently, beauty does not 

46 



count for as much as it should; and this must explain Sam's 
single lot, especially since he seldom ventures beyond the en- 
chanted paradise in which his native home is situated. In that 
region, Sam's wonderful combination of physical graces with 
which nature has taken so much pains to fit him out, seems to 
pass all unheeded ; for I never heard of him at an apple-cut or 
a quilting-bee in the whole countryside. But Sam is a happy- 
go-easy fellow, who would n't take the trouble to court a girl, 
and who does n't " keer a hen-roost pullet fer bein' 'thaewt a 
mate." Sam's real name is Tonguer, but in all the country 
around his home no one calls him so. There, he is " Sam 
Saphead" and has been far longer than I can recollect. How 
Sam came by this base cognomen I am at a loss to guess, for, 
assuredly, Sam is not wanting in motherwit ; but he does not 
seem to mind the cognomen, so why should we ? 

Sam took possession of my small empire without ceremony. 
He hung his big hat on the gas-jet. (The gas had not been 
lighted, it not being dark.) There it stuck, one broad brim 
touching the ceiling, while the other reached half-way to the 
floor. Then, he crossed the room to the window, stretched one 
lank arm the whole length of the sill, tipped his chair back until 
it touched the wall, threw his other arm at full length along 
the mantel-piece, — which fortunately was unoccupied, — spread 
out his legs and pushed them ahead of him so that the soles of 
his heavy boots scraped the wall in the corner of my rather 
small sanctum. 

"Well, Sam," I said, resuming my seat at my desk, and 
wondering within me if he had made himself quite comfortable, 
v so you 've come over to see the races !" 

" Cum tew see part o' the race — jist a few speserments," 
Sam replied mysteriously. 

47 



"What 's the use to see only part of one race when you 
might just as well take in the whole regatta?" I asked, in 
some slight amazement. " Why not see all the races, while 
you 're about it? " 

" T-ha'n't the raggetty I cum tew see," answered Sam, 
assuming a wise air. *• I ain't hankerin' arter watchin' fellers 
peck water. I s'pose I don' know 'nuff tew see the fun in 't. 
I 'm tew much o' a saphead fer gittin' on tew that, I specks; 
but I don' keer a hen-roost pullet 'f I be. Fur' 'velupin' 
mustel 's kensarned, I kin gaze 't fellers choppin' wood, back 
in my kentry, most enny time, 'n' I 'd a good sight ruther look 
't that 'n tew see 'em jist flop water, kes thar 's sunthin' tew 
show fer choppin' wood arter 't 's thr'u' with, wile's t'uther, 
thar ha'n't nawthin', 'nless some fool 's p'ses'd with a noshun 
tew tumble aewt o' the boat, or gits sheved aewt." 

"Why did you come over, if you didn't come to see the 
races?" I demanded, with some show of impatience, feeling 
that there must be an end put to his illogical rambling, though 
it amused me not a little. " You say you 're not interested in 
the races. I thought everybody was interested in them, except 
myself." (I expected Sam would ask why I was n't inter- 
ested ; but he did n't.) 

"Cum tew see the man-naggarry," returned Sam, with a 
suggestive grin. 

"Why, Sam, you must be off your reckoning," I said. 
" There 's no circus in town." 

"Ha'n't they? Wull, v/ho said thar wuz?" Sam asked 
with a chuckle. 

" You as much as said so," I replied. 

" Did I ? I didn' know 's I did. Wen 'd I say thar wuz a 
sarcus ? ' ' 

48 



«' Did n't you say that you have come in town to see the 
menagerie? " 

"Sarten, 'n' so I hev." 

•■* How long are you going to wait in town for the menagerie 
to arrive? " 

" Ha'n't got tew wait 't all. 'T 's 'rived naew." 

"Where is the menagerie to show? I fear the managers 
will have a slim crowd. They should have known better than 
to try to run against the races. I thought the races were the 
only slippers in the show-case for to-morrow." 

"I ges the races won't 'feet the man-naggarry much," re- 
turned Sam. " T '11 be showin' all over taewn, 'n' utherwares 
tew." 

"You're not accustomed to speaking with me in riddles, 
Sam," I said. " Now, explain yourself." 

V Mebby I don' know 'nuff tew 'splannify so 's yew '11 git 
sight o' the p'int on't," he began dubiously. 

"Suppose you show me that there is a point to it, before 
you try to make me see it," I suggested. 

" I ha'n't jist got the dead hang o' 'spressin' my 'pinyuns 'n 
ellergunt fraziollergy, 'n' I 'm 'fear'd I '11 git 'n a slump; but — 
d'yew mind 'f I light my pipe 'fore I wade 'n? Fer 't 's a 
purty big hole I 'm gittin' 'ntew, 'n' thar 's deep water 'twixt 
me 'n' the bottom on't." 

I did n't express my mind. In fact, Sam did n't give me 
time. He reached behind him with the arm that had been 
resting on the mantel-piece, jerked out an old, long-stemmed, 
weather-beaten corn-cob pipe, whose faithfulness had been 
proven, pulled an old tin box from a pocket with the hand that 

49 



had been on the window-sill, filled his pipe from it, scratched 
a match, which he had produced simultaneously with the pipe, 
on the leg of his trousers. There was a horrid scent of sul- 
phur, which was immediately followed by another scent more 
difficult to define. From the odor, I thought the pipe might 
have been filled with catnip. I stifled the protest I wanted to 
make, and waited for Sam to resume. I did n't wait long. 

" Wull, 't-ha'n't jist 'zackly wat yew 'd call a reg'lar 'nag- 
garry mebby, kes they don' keep most o' the annermuls caged. 
Thar 's some o' the annermuls t 's sart o' wild, 'n' 'en thar 's 
some 't-ha'n't wild a bit; but 'baewt the unly critturs they 
keep caged 's them 's got bad blood. Ges yew see wat I 'm 
drivin' at 'fore this time, don' yew? " 

"No; 1 don't," I said simply. "Now, what are you 
driving at? " 

" I 'm 'fear'd I ain't makin' much shake 't 'ntulligiblizin'. 
1 'm drivin' 't this heer humun 'naggarry. ' Course yew know 
't thar 's more dif'rent kinds o' annermuls 'n this heer humun 
fam'Iy 'n thar 's 'n all t'uther f am 'lies put tewgether aewtside 
on't." 

" No ; I do n't," I retorted testily. V I " 

•' Naew, look heer, nayber," broke in Sam, before I could 
say another word, "dew yew mean tew tell me 't yew 'v ben 
heer 's long 's yew hev, 'n' ha 'n't faewnd aewt yit 't this heer 
humun fam'ly 's kenkatternated o' all the aewtcast annermuls 
'n all t'uther fam'lies o' creation? " 

He took his pipe from his mouth, blew a long breath, which 
fairly filled the room with smoke and choked me so that I 
coughed violently, while Sam shook with vulgar mirth, as if 
he enjoyed my misery. 

50 



" Har ! har ! har ! har ! ! ! I did n' s'pose Sam Saphead ked 
tell yew nawthin' ! Har ! har ! har ! ! ! I 'spected yew 'd got 
the hull f'los'fy o' life daewn tew parfeckshun ! Har! har! 
har ! har ! har ! har ! har ! har ! har ! ! ! " 

I quite lost my temper. "See here, Sam Saphead," I 
roared, picking up a book — what kept me from throwing it at 
his pate heaven only knows — "What on earth is the matter 
with you? I should say that you had been drinking strong 
liquors if I did n't know that you joined a temperance lodge 
years ago. I want you to recollect that you 're one specimen 
in this human menagerie, as you call it — that you 're one of 
these "aewtcast annermuls." 

" D' I say 't I wuz n't one o' them annermuls? I 'm one 'o 
the 'naggarry; but I don' know haew I 'm goin' tew help it. 
Ev'rybody calls me Saphead, 'n' I don' keer a hen-roost pullet ; 
but I ha 'n't gallervanted 'raewnd this heer world fifty-four year 
fer nawthin', nayber, 'n' wat I 'v ben tellin' yew 's gawspul 
truth, 'n' 't 's truer 'n the way some folks preach gawspul, tew. 
Thar 's all sarts 'n' kendishuns o' annermuls 'n this heer 
humun fam'ly, 'n' some folks 's got more 'n one annermul in 
one skin. Thar 's ellerfunts o' men, 't won't let yew say naw- 
thin' 'g'in' wat they larnt 'r ges'd at, 'n' they 'd tromp yew 
daewn flatter 'n a pannycake 'f they ked git yew under thar 
feet; 'n' thar 's rinusseruses o' men, 't 's got hides thicker 'n 
yew ked cut thr'u' v/ith a 'tater-hook; 'n' thar 's munkys o' 
men, 't-ha'n't got no 'pinyun ner way o' doin' nawthin' thar 
pars'nal manifacter, ner never will hev, but jist got tew copy 
arter t'uther critturs; 'n' thar 's cammuls o' men, 't 's got big 
humps on 'em ; 'n' thar 's woodchucks o' men, 't crawls intew 
holes 'n' jist sleeps hull year on a stretch, 'n' yew kedn' git 
'em aewt 't all 'f 't wa'n't they wuz starvin' fer grub; 'n' thar 

51 



's dunkys o' men, allers a-brayin' 'baewt sunthin' 't they don' 
know nawthin' 'baewt ; 'n' thar 's hogs o' men, 't wants ev'ry- 
thin', 'n' ha 'n't willin' *t nobody els shed hev nawthin'. Them 
's unly a few o' the mod'rate sarts. T-ha'n't the wust v'ri'- 
ties. I ha'n't got pashunts tew discus them fellers ; 'f I shed, 
I *d git tew cussin', I 'm 'fear'd." 

"You haven't said anything about women," I ventured to 
remark. " Of course, there are no animals in women's 
skins. ' ' 

" 0, sarten 's yew 're born, thar 's piles on 'em. Most 'o 
'em arr peacocks 'n' parrots 'n' crows 'n' magpies ; but thar 's 
some buzards 'n' jackals 'n' sarpants 'n' tig'russes — 'n' I 
knowed one wunst 't hed a cat 'n' a rattlesnake rolled intew 
one hide. But then, thar 's some cooin' doves — 'n' a mighty 
few angels," said Sam, with an entire change of tone. " Bless 
'em. Them last 's all 't keeps the man-naggarry frum goin' 
mad." 

He pulled a big red handkerchief from his pocket, and blew 
his nose hard. It was the first time that I had ever seen Sam 
shew any tender sentiment ; but perhaps it was the fault of the 
pipe. 

There was a long pause, and then Sam said abruptly: 
" Thar 's piles I wuz achin' tew say tew yew, nayber, but my 
pipe 's gone aewt, 'n' 't 's gittin' latish ; so I '11 be moggin'." 

It had grown quite dark. I was entirely free from any hint 
of headache, for which I was very grateful to Sam, despite all 
his nonsense. I went with him down the stairs to the street 
door, and, as we parted, I said: " Come again, Sam. You 're 
always welcome, you know. You 're an honest fellow for all 
your freaks. And you won't mind if I'm a little cross some- 
times, will you, Sam? " 

52 



"No, nayber, 'course I won't. Yew 'v got a hull pile tew 
rumple yew up 't I don' know nawthin' 'baewt. We all hev 
got aewr ups 'n' daewns, 'n' we 've all got tew show wat anner- 
mul 's in aewr hide, whether we keer a hen-roost pullet 'baewt 
doin' it 'r no'. Good-night, nayber." 

* 4 Good-night, Sam," I said. "Always call on me when you 
come in town." 

I closed the street door softly, and ascended the stairs to 
my sanctum, very thoughtful, wondering if Sam Saphead was, 
after all, quite so much an idiot as most people fancied. 



53 




A REFLECTION. 

AY thy kinds words in the living ear. 

Wait not till the shroud and pall. 
Do thy kind acts while thy loved is near 
Wait not till the shadows fall. 

The petulant words will quickly rise 
From a fretful, peevish heart. 

If they pass thy tongue, do not disguise ; 
But wait for the better part. 

Truly 't is making the bad thing worse 
When we wish the bad undone. 

'T is sweet to soften the wrankling curse 
With blessings that overrun. 



54 



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